Making Outbound Feel Like Inbound

Everyone wants their cold calls to feel nice and smooth like inbound. The problem we’re all seeing is that over the last 5-10 years, even this year sellers everywhere are seeing an increased difficulty in getting the right customer on the phone at the right time.

That is what it’s all about, isn’t it?

This article is written for CEOs, Sales Leaders, inside sales experts and people supporting them that are looking to gain a competitive advantage to dominate their marketplace with a goal to find new Enterprise clients faster. This article includes proven tactics that have worked in the field to generate deals and pipeline with Enterprise clients across an array of industries. This article will focus primarily on outbound calling #ColdCallingisNotDead.

Future articles will dive deeper into best practices with scripts, inbound leads and turn older cold leads into an immediate pipeline. After this three-minute read, you’ll walk away with an understanding of how to generate pipeline from cold outbound in enterprise accounts by creating follow-ups and referrals at a higher speed than you previously thought was possible…

So, let’s assume you or someone from your organization follows TOPO, went to the AA-ISP Leadership Summit, Outbound, Sales 3.0 or another quality conference and your team has created a list of what you believe are your top prospects at top companies that you want to do business with.

You already know that when your sellers make their fifty phone calls a day your team only speaks with one or two people on your list on average. Good news, your team doesn’t have to do more work to get better results!

How is that possible?

One-Click Conversations™ allow a BDR to push a button and talk to a hard to reach prospect within just a few minutes. By coupling one-click conversations with one-click personalization, personalization at scale is truly possible.

You may have read in Aaron Ross, Predictable Revenue, his strategy to send emails to key accounts in order get to referred to the decision maker. Sometimes this will work, but not as well now in crowded market where non-personalized email is being commoditized. I’ve been using mapping calls for years and it works really well, that is a part of this process. YOUR voice really helps you to STICK in your buyer’s mind!

You believe in your product, you had a good conversation internally to determine your script that immediately conveys to any prospect on your list that they should talk to you right now or they aren’t the right person or the right fit (feel free to contact me on this subject).

When you are speaking with a new prospect every two to five minutes with Director or higher title and larger company size, it’s a lot easier to accept when your prospect says, “Call me back on Wednesday” or “Sorry, I’m taking my kids to school” or “I’m not the right person, you need to speak with our marketing department”. All of those responses that your prospect just told you are key.

How do you take a prospect’s response “sorry you caught me at the wrong time” or “sorry, wrong person” and turn it into pipeline?

Cold calls are an interruption. When you call someone at the “wrong time” and you pitch it’s more likely your outcome is going to be less favorable than when you catch them at the right time. So, when you find out the right time and take good notes you’ll be prepared for your next call. You, me and everyone else used to either make a SalesForce task or mark it on our calendar to call back. Now, this is even more simple. You can just add the notes directly into One-Click Conversations™ tool and seamlessly pass them into your follow-up lists.

Your hypothesis of who to call that would benefit the most at Macy’s or MongoDB or SalesForce from your product or service may be right, this is gold. Celebrate your win! It’s more commonly going to have been close. Let’s examine when you were close.

Like the warrior you are, you pitched and gained credibility and peaked your prospect’s interest, but then they told you sorry, “You really need to speak with Russ Barck”. That’s a tremendous positive scenario. You may have heard another variation such as “You need to speak with our Head of Marketing”. By doing a quick LinkedIn search while you are the phone and asking, “is Russ Barck is the person who would benefit the most from a conversation with company X”, you will be in a much better position.

Logical and common responses to “Is Russ Barck the right person to speak with?”:

Yes, it is Russ.

It’s not Russ, its Mary (because they feel more like you know their company, have done your research and less like they are giving away key information)

Sorry, I don’t know that person

Not sure, but the right person is based in our HQ in San Jose, California in our Marketing Department

You can also leverage a second LinkedIn search while waiting for a response, your CRM or GDPR compliant third-party data providers to see if you can quickly find a second person to ask if they are the person that would benefit the most from your company’s service. You can just add the notes and contact details directly into our One-Click Conversations™ tool and this seamlessly passes your referrals into your follow up lists.

“So, now that I have all these callback and referrals what do I now? Where is the magic?!”

Thank you for your patience and reading this far.

Here’s the magic:

When you create a follow-up list with callbacks that have good working phone numbers your pick-up rate spikes from 1 conversation in 20 to 40 dial attempts in Enterprise to 1 conversation in just 7 dial attempts.

When you reach your prospect at the right time and your notes tell you to say, “Hey Jim, last time we spoke you were taking your kids to school, did I catch you at an okay time” it changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. Those conversations are leading to a meeting or at least a referral one in two or three conversations for us and our clients.

When you reach your prospect’s you were referred to directly using our example with Russ Barck and say, “Scott Darling suggested speaking with you (or the marketing team) about how our company can help you with X” those conversations are leading to a meeting one in two or three conversations.

The pain of sitting there and waiting for someone to pick up is automated, your notes automated and systemized, your conversations with the research automated with AI feel one to one and your follow-ups with your notes are golden.

Now your follow-up list you created with One-Click Conversations™ serves up a meeting with a hot prospect about once per day every day. Congratulations you’ve unlocked a significant portion of how to add 15 to 25 meetings with Enterprise prospects into your funnel every month.

Your follow-up list of callbacks and referrals that you created from outbound cold calling will now feel like hot inbound leads because you are talking to the right prospects at the right time!

Curiosity May Have Killed the Cat but it Won the Deal

Be curious – asking smart – educate yourself

Listen – let them talk, take notes

Bring Insights – based on what you told me – you must be educated on the market and the customer